Principles for Relationships from God's Word by Claudio Consuegra

It gets better with age

Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” Genesis 18:12 (NKJV)

The controversial singer Miley Cyrus expressed at a TODAY show in 2013 that sex decrees or totally ends after age 40. “I heard when you turn 40, things start to go a little less sexual,” Cyrus told Lauer. “Probably around 40, around that time, I heard that’s when people don’t have sex anymore.”

On the contrary, as discussed on TODAY’s[i] trending segment in 2015, a study found that when couples pass their 50th wedding anniversary, they actually experienced a slight increase in their sex lives, and that couples married for 65 years reported more sex than those married for 50 years.

Researchers noted “that an individual married for 50 years will have somewhat less sex than an individual married for 65 years.” The study of 1,656 married men and women ages 57 to 87, was published in the January issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior. The data was collected from the 2005 – 2006 National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, which was a comprehensive study of sexual attitudes and behavior among older Americans.

A survey conducted by the same show in 2014 found that just over one-third of people in their 50s, both married and single, reported having sex a few times a week or month. By comparison, 43 percent of 40-somethings said they had sex once a week. Nearly 25 percent of people in their 50s reported having no sex ever, compared to 17 percent of those in their 40s, according to the online survey of more than 1,400 adults, ages 45-69. But of the sex they’re having, 45 percent say they are quite satisfied with their sex lives, thank you very much.

What this research indicates is that sex between husbands and wives does not have to come to an end when the age of childbearing arrives but can continue to provide pleasure to both spouse for many more years to come. Even Sarah, Abraham’s wife, understood that.

Father God, help us to continue to enjoy sexual intimacy in our marriage because it keeps us emotionally and physically close to each other even into the golden years of our life.